Thursday, 20 December 2012

China is top dam builder, going where others won't

This
Oct. 6, 2012 photo shows a construction site of a dam being built by
China National Heavy Machinery Corporation on the Tatay River in Koh
Kong province, some 210 kilometers (130 miles) west of Phnom Penh,
Cambodia. Up a sweeping, jungle valley in a remote corner of Cambodia,
Chinese engineers and workers are raising a 100-meter- (330-foot) high
dam over the protests of villagers and activists. Only Chinese companies
are willing to tame the Tatay and other rivers of Koh Kong province,
one of Southeast Asia’s last great wilderness areas. (AP Photo/Heng
Sinith) This
Oct. 6, 2012 photo shows a construction site of a dam being built by
China National Heavy Machinery Corporation on the Tatay River in Koh
Kong province, some 210 kilometers (130 miles) west of Phnom Penh,
Cambodia. Up a sweeping, jungle valley in a remote corner of Cambodia,
Chinese engineers and workers are raising a 100-meter- (330-foot) high
dam over the protests of villagers and activists. Only Chinese companies
are willing to tame the Tatay and other rivers of Koh Kong province,
one of Southeast Asia’s last great wilderness areas. (AP Photo/Heng
Sinith)

By By DENIS D. GRAY and ELAINE KURTENBACH |Associated Press

TATAY RIVER, Cambodia
(AP) — Up a sweeping jungle valley in a remote corner of Cambodia,
Chinese engineers and workers are raising a 100-meter- (330-foot-) high
dam over the protests of villagers and activists. Only Chinese companies are willing to tame the Tatay and other rivers of Koh Kong province, one of Southeast Asia's last great wilderness areas.

It's a scenario that is hardly unique. China's giant state enterprises and banks have completed, are working on or are proposing some 300 dams from Algeria to Myanmar.

Poor countries contend the dams
are crucial to bringing electricity to tens of millions who live without
it and boosting living standards. Environmental activists and other
opponents counter that China, the world's No. 1 dam builder, is willing
and able to go where most Western companies, the World Bank and others
won't tread anymore because of environmental, social, political or
financing concerns.

"China is the one financier able to provide money for projects that
don't meet international standards," said Ian Baird, an assistant
professor of geography at the University of Wisconsin who has worked in
Southeast Asia for decades. "You go to China if you want to have them
financed."

The consequence, critics say, is a
rollback to an era of ill-conceived, destructive mega-dams that many
thought had passed. The most recent trend is to dam entire rivers with a
cascade of barriers, as China's state-owned Sinohydro has proposed on
Colombia's Magdalene River and the Nam Ou in Laos, where contracts for
seven dams have been signed.

Viewed by some in the developing
world as essential icons of progress, dams in countries as far apart as
Ecuador, Myanmar and Zambia have spearheaded or reinforced China's
rising economic might around the world. They are tied to or put up in
tandem with other infrastructure projects and businesses, and power
generation equipment ranks as China's second-largest export earner after
electrical machinery and equipment.

In energy-starved Cambodia, trade with China has risen to 19 percent
of GDP from 10 percent five years ago, according to an Associated Press
analysis of International Monetary Fund data.

The year-old $280 million Kamchay Dam in Cambodia's Kampot province
was the largest ever foreign investment when approved as well as a
political flag-carrier for Beijing. It has been hailed by both
governments as a "symbol of close Chinese-Cambodian ties."

Cambodia's electricity demand grew more than 16 percent a year from
2002 to 2011, with shortfalls largely met through costly oil imports,
said Bun Narith, a deputy director general in the Ministry of Industry,
Mines and Energy. Only 14 percent of rural homes have electricity, one
of the lowest levels in Southeast Asia.

"We have no choice," Bun Narith
said. "Hydropower is the priority, and the Chinese have the initiative
and capability, both financial and technical."

The 20 hydro dams built, being constructed or under study in
Cambodia, the bulk of them by the Chinese, would lift Cambodia out of
literal darkness and make it energy self-sufficient, he said. "We should
have a win-win policy, a balance between environment and energy. After
all, electricity is also a basic human need."

Electric rates have fallen in Kampot town since the opening of the nearby Kamchay Dam, but they remain high.

"Everybody believed that after the dam is completed, there will be
extra power to use in Kampot and the price will be much cheaper, but in
fact there is not much change," taxi driver Prum Virak said.

He said his house is without power three to four hours every day. The
price of electricity has dropped to 920 riel (23 cents) per
kilowatt-hour from 1,100 riel six months earlier when power was being
imported from Vietnam.

In Myanmar, where China may build as many as 50 dams, one re-ignited
an ethnic insurgency in 2011 and fanned a wider, smoldering anti-Chinese
backlash. Mega-dams in Africa and Latin America have also sparked
sometimes violent protests.

The Myitsone dam in Myanmar would
have displaced thousands and flooded the spiritual heartland of the
Kachin ethnic minority, which cited the project as one reason for again
taking up arms.

The government abruptly cancelled it earlier this year, a warning
shot that China must clean up its image, if not its act, to avoid both
political and economic fallout, analysts say.

The rise of China as a dam-building power began in the early 2000s as
its companies beat out then dominant Western competitors and just as
anti-dam lobbyists were celebrating victories over the World Bank, until
then the leading international dam financier. In the United States,
where the golden era of dams peaked in the 1960s, scores are being
decommissioned.

The industry, shepherded by the
World Commission on Dams, was moving toward setting higher, mandatory
standards to mitigate the negative impacts of large dams — environmental
degradation, uprooting of communities, depletion of aquatic life — and
maximize their positives: flood prevention, irrigation of farmlands,
relatively clean energy for homes and industry.

"The Chinese are now definitely diluting the standards debate. We're
back to talking about basics," said Grace Mang, who monitors China's dam
industry for the U.S. -based environmental group International Rivers.
"There is a pattern of projects that would have been delayed, maybe for
decades, or dropped, coming back on line with the assistance of Chinese
companies and banks."

Among such projects:

— Nepal's West Seti dam, which
would force some 10,000 poor villagers from their homes in a
biodiversity-rich area. It hung in limbo after Australia's Snowy
Mountain Engineering Corp. failed to attract international funders, and
the Asian Development Bank pulled out because the dam didn't meet its
standards. Six months after the cancellation, the Chinese took over the
project.

— A number of dams being built inside or adjacent to nature reserves,
including Ghana's Bui Dam and two proposed on the Patuca River in
Honduras, where a U.S. developer earlier pulled out for environmental
reasons.

— The 1,500-megawatt Coca Codo Sinclair Dam, Ecuador's largest ever
infrastructure project, which would encroach on a vast rainforest
between the Andes and the Amazon and possibly dry up the country's
highest waterfall, located in a UNESCO reserve.

— Ethiopia's Gibe III dam,
Africa's largest. Protesters gathered at the Chinese Embassy in
neighboring Kenya last year to denounce Chinese companies involved in
the project, which they said would endanger the livelihoods of hundreds
of thousands of downstream farmers. Ethiopian officials defend it,
saying less than 2 percent of the rural population has access to
electricity.

The Chinese are taking some steps to improve their image. Sinohydro
Corp., which says it controls half the global market for hydropower
projects, is expected to release an environmental policy soon and
dispatch public relations teams to its offices worldwide. An expert from
China's Institute for International Economic Research recently toured
Southeast Asia to investigate problems caused by Chinese dams.

The Export-Import Bank of China, the major dam financier, has made
some efforts to improve implementation of projects it backs. In a
pattern found in other African countries, the Belinga dam planned within
Gabon's Ivindo National Park was to power other Chinese enterprises
including a mine for iron ore to be shipped to China via a Chinese-built
railway and seaport. However, the Exim Bank suspended funding for the
dam, citing the national park as one reason.

"The Chinese are seeking a Chinese way of operating at international
environmental standards rather than have international standards imposed
on them," Mang said.

The Chinese are virtually silent on even such seemingly positive
developments, reflecting a persistent lack of transparency on the issue.

The Associated Press sought
comment for more than six months from major dam contractors, including
Sinohydro, Guodian, China Three Gorges and China Southern Power, calling
and submitting written interview requests. The companies provided
Internet links to background information or reports about projects in
some cases. But most companies didn't respond at all, and those that did
rejected requests for answers to specific questions.

Requests for comment on allegations of corruption associated with dam
projects were either rejected or failed to draw a response from the
Commerce Ministry, Foreign Ministry and the National Development and
Reform Commission.

China, the world's largest producer of hydropower, has honed its dam
building skills at home, but experts say that its companies build to
varying levels of quality abroad depending on what the clients demand.

"My sense is that when the Chinese build a dam overseas, they give
you the standards (the local officials) insist on," said Kenneth
Pomeranz, an expert on water issues at the University of Chicago. "When
governments say, 'We want it done right,' they know how to do that too."

Brian Richter, of the U.S.-based Nature Conservancy, said the Chinese
believe it is not their role to set environmental and social
regulations, but many countries in which they operate don't have the
capacity to enforce proper ones "so you end up with nobody paying
attention." And there's corruption.

Cambodia seems an apt example,
and in particular Koh Kong province, dubbed the "battery of Cambodia."
It is remote, populated mostly by poorly educated ethnic minorities and
dominated by the government's business cronies, who resort to brutal
tactics with scant scrutiny by activist groups.

"They can basically do what they want down there. It's just the Wild
West," said Marcus Hardtke, a German forestry expert with detailed
knowledge of the area. He said even international environmental groups
have remained largely quiet to avoid clashing with the autocratic
government of Prime Minister Hun Sen.

One dam has been built in Koh Kong, three more are under construction
and another — the Cheay Areng — was recently approved despite heavy
opposition.

The Areng was rejected for funding in a 2007 Japanese government
study as having a very low rate of economic return, and a Chinese
company, China Southern Power Grid, pulled out of the project on
technical and possibly environmental grounds. Company engineers
reportedly cited the need to build a sloping, 24-kilometer-long tunnel
to the first turbine because the valley below the dam was too flat.

Additionally, the Areng Valley —
regarded as a "biodiversity jewel" with great ecotourism potential —
would be ravaged not only by the reservoir but by access roads and
transmission lines. The area contains perhaps Cambodia's most profuse
wildlife including the world's largest population of almost extinct
Siamese crocodiles. Some 1,000 villagers are facing eviction.

Opponents believe the seemingly illogical trade-offs can be explained
by kickbacks, profit-sharing from highly lucrative illegal logging in
the area and a general Chinese push into Koh Kong that includes clearing
an area seven times larger than Manhattan for a Chinese-leased seaside
pleasure city, having displaced more than 1,000 families from their
homes.

Son Chhay, one of the few
opposition members in Parliament, said that Chinese-Cambodian dam
contracts are simply geared to making profits for the parties involved
rather than generating low-cost electricity for the country.

"The Chinese have a funny way of doing deals in Cambodia.
Construction costs are inflated by some 300 percent, and the profits
shared," Son Chhay said. The Cambodian government declined to comment
on his claims.

The government's belief in the necessity of the projects is echoed by
Lu Shi Long, the chief engineer at Tatay dam, set for completion in
2014 by the China National Heavy Machinery Corporation.

"The construction of this hydropower station is beneficial for the
development of Cambodia's economy and the improvement of Cambodian
living standards. It's also a great opportunity for Chinese companies,"
he said. "As an engineer, I am proud of this project."

As he speaks, some of the 2,000
workers, 800 of them Chinese, swarm over the vast dam wall, smoothing
the rocky surface before a concrete facing will be applied. Relays of
trucks ferry stones from a quarry gouged out of a hillside. The site is
surrounded by a sea of tropical green.

Illegal loggers ring the site,
having all but wiped out stands of rosewood, the highly prized hardwood
smuggled to China's furniture makers.

Improvements won't come, said the
Nature Conservancy's Richter, until sustainable standards can be
verified by an independent body.

"The industry as a whole
recognizes that there's a need, but the playing field has shifted and
the Chinese companies are by far the dominant players," he said. "The
future depends on them, for better or worse."

EDITOR'S NOTE _ This story is
part of "China's Reach," a project tracking China's influence on its
trading partners over three decades and exploring how that is changing
business, politics and daily life. Keep up with AP's reporting on
China's Reach, and join the conversation about it, using
(hashtag)APChinaReach on Twitter.

1 comment:

Between Tea Banh and Hun Sen, who would you support? គាំទ្រ ហ៊ុន សែន ឬ ទា បាញ់?

Between Hun Sen and Sok An, who would you support? គាំទ្រ ហ៊ុន​ សែន ឬ សុខ អាន?

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